The 1st South Asia Dialogue Platform takes place in Sri Lanka
The 1st South Asia Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Humanitarian Action will take place this week in Colombo, Sri Lanka. From 10 to 11 September, participants from across the region will come together to discuss the theme ‘Starting a new chapter: the first national anticipatory action frameworks’.
Moving towards national frameworks for anticipatory action
In recent years, there has been an increasing uptake of anticipatory action across the wider Asia-Pacific region. Encouragingly, this has included government-led efforts to institutionalize the approach at the country level; for example, through adapting laws and policies to enable anticipatory action to be implemented ahead of crises.
National frameworks for anticipatory action could further support this positive trend, setting out the actions that each stakeholder in a country will take ahead of a forecastable hazard. Countries including Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan have already begun this process, and the South Asia Dialogue Platform will be an opportunity to examine the challenges and opportunities of establishing such national-level frameworks. Over two days, the invited participants will:
- share knowledge and evidence from the implementation, mainstreaming and evaluation of anticipatory action in South Asia to date
- learn from the countries that have already begun drafting national frameworks for certain hazards
- identify good practices, gaps, roadblocks and milestones for institutionalizing anticipatory action in South Asia at the sub-regional level, as well as at national levels.
A focus on outcomes
To ensure that the event leads to real change, the South Asia Dialogue Platform is focused on delivering three main outputs:
- A shared South Asia strategy on how to institutionalize anticipatory action via national frameworks and links to existing laws and policies.
- Based on this strategy, an outcome statement – with concrete commitments and a clear timeline – about how to institutionalize these frameworks; this will allow partners to identify commitments which they can support technically or financially.
- An established network of practitioners that can support each other via peer learning.
Shifting to the national level: the Sri Lanka National Dialogue Platform
Immediately after the South Asia Dialogue Platform, the Sri Lanka National Dialogue Platform aims to develop a common understanding of anticipatory action among the main actors in the country. Sri Lanka has achieved huge progress in its efforts to firmly establish anticipatory action within its disaster-risk-management system, and this national event will be a chance for the country’s growing anticipatory action community to share and exchange the knowledge, best practices and lessons learned to date.
The South Asia Dialogue Platform is hosted by the Ministry of Defense of Sri Lanka collaboratively with the Sri Lanka Anticipatory Action Working Group and organized by the Asia Pacific Technical Working Group on Anticipatory Action. It is supported by the Anticipation Hub, an initiative of the German Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, as well as World Vision Lanka, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), the Asian Preparedness Partnership (APP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP). Financial support is provided by the German Federal Foreign Office.
The Sri Lanka National Dialogue Platform is being organized by the country’s Anticipatory Action Technical Working Group, with the support of Asia-Pacific Anticipatory Action Technical Working Group.